The making of Malaysian solidarity - Pronouns usage in courteous language among multi-ethnic pupils

This study was conducted to explore the use of pronouns among pupils of various ethnic groups in Malaysia’s national primary school. Although pronouns are formally taught in school there are still problems from the perspective of using pronouns as a courteous language. The researcher has conducted a case study in Sekolah Kebangsaan Sri Tebrau, Johor Bahru, and about 72 pupils were selected randomly. The politeness scale of Geoffrey Leech was used as a theoretical framework for this study. Interview methods and questionnaires on Discourse Completion Task were used to obtain the data. Data were analysed using the SPSS for Windows in terms of frequencies and percentages. The study found that Malay pupils used a variety of pronouns in conversation. The pronouns ’aku-kau’ and ’saya-awak’ were more frequently used by Malay pupils compared to non-Malay pupils who were more comfortable using ’saya-kamu’. The problems in pronouns usage exists among the Malays and non-Malay pupils in different situations. Malay pupils often used the pronoun ’dia orang’, ’kita orang’ and ’kau orang’ in a conversation and this could affect the quality of writing while non-Malay pupils used the correct pronouns of ’mereka’, ’kami’ and ’kamu semua’. For non-Malay pupils, some of them still used the pronoun ’kamu’ or ’awak’ in their conversation with teachers whereas the usage of the word ’teacher’ was more polite than calling them ’kamu’. This coincides with the Leech Politeness Scale, stating that the farther in social distance or status distance, the more politeness utterance should be used. The wrong usage of proper pronouns can lead to implications in harmonious relations between ethnic groups. The fact is although learning pronouns should not be seen as a matter of grammar emphasis should be given to the pronouns function as part of courteous language.